Letter from London

Letter from London

by Ian McKay, e-mail: <ianmckay1@btinternet.com>

An Explanation and an Apology

If this month's "Letter" appears to be weighted in favour of one London salesroom, it is simply because ever busy Bonhams have moved much more swiftly back into action than the others, but I must take the blame if it's felt that there are more than the usual signs of personal preferences on display. I own up to being fascinated by polar exploration, to a lifelong love of old aeroplanes, and to a more recent addiction to the hauntingly still paintings of Vilhelm Hammershøi, but they all showed up prominently in my roundup of what was, I should say in my defence, a fairly thin crop of recent end of summer sales, and I admit to taking full advantage of the opportunity that offered itself.

A Toothsome Relic of the Voyage of the Beagle

September 16 at Bonhams saw an "Exploration and Travel" sale, the sort of mix of pictures, books, maps, and artefacts that Christie's have been mounting for some years now but which for the Knightsbridge salesroom was a first and very successful attempt at this format.

One item that had bidders "chomping at the bit," to quote the salesroom, was a piece of scrimshaw work. One of the marine privates who served on the Beagle during Darwin's famous voyage to the Galapagos was James Adolphus Bute, who in later years gained something of a reputation as a carver, and the very last lot in the Bonhams sale was a whale's tooth decorated with views of the Beagle. These showed her in rough seas against a mountainous shoreline, lettered "Working H.M. Sloop BEAGLE up the River Santa Cruz," and on the side reproduced here the ship beached and careened to effect repairs to her keel, lettered "H.M. Sloop Beagle laid on shore to repair her Forefoot."

Bute could have acquired the sperm whale's tooth when the Beagle called at the whaling station in the Falkland Islands, or from any whaler they might have encountered at sea, but whether he carved the tooth on the voyage or at some later date is a question that may have troubled some potential buyers—especially as these two images tie in very closely with entries in the diary that Darwin published a later date.

The first of these relevant entries reads: "13th April 1834. Dropped our anchor within the mouth of the river of Santa Cruz; our passage has been a fortunate one; only six days, & this against the constant Westerly breezes. - It blew very strong in the morning, & we could only just manage to fetch in. - I have never seen His majesty's vessel under a greater press of sail or much closer to a lee-shore. - Tomorrow a place will be sought out to lay her aground to look at her bottom. Her top-masts & everything excepting main masts will be on deck & her guns, anchors &c on shore."

Then three days later we have: "The Ship was laid on shore; it was found that several feet of her false keel were knocked off, but this is no essential damage; one tide was sufficient to repair her & after noon she floated off & was again moored in safety. Nothing could be more favourable than both the weather & place for this rather ticklish operation."

There is an engraving by Landseer after the Beagle's official artist, Conrad Marten, that shows this very event, but it is a view from the bow on and certainly not one that Bute could have used as a model.

In the event, the 7" long tooth found a buyer at $67,320, just a little short of the high estimate, but in a year that marks the bicentenary of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species… one cannot help wonder if the price might have been a little more had there been indisputable proof that it was done at the time of the events depicted.

This was not the only piece of scrimshaw work in the sale. Bid to $11,880—again by a collector—was a silver-mounted whale's tooth snuffbox, decorated with a whaling scene and engraved around the rim of the silver lid, "A relic of the Franklin Search Expedition presented to Mr. John Morrison." Again it is not certain whether this was done on board one of the many ships that searched in vain for years in the hope of finding survivors of Sir John Franklin's lost Arctic expedition.

In Darwin's Patagonian Footsteps

Sold for $18,810—against an estimate of $990/1320—at Bonhams on September 16 was an illustrated journal kept by naval hydrographer Lieutenant John Hoskyn during surveying voyages made in 1865 to the Ionian islands in the Mediterranean and in 1866-68 to the Straits of Magellan and Patagonia. The latter voyage was on HMS Nassau, a steam survey gunboat which carried the Irish naturalist Robert Cunningham and surveyed many of the sites visited by the Beagle a few decades earlier. Hoskyn's name cannot be mentioned in the same scientific breath as that of Darwin, but for his surveying efforts he did get a Patagonian anchorage on the Messier Channel named after him.

And All for Three Penguin Eggs…

Edward Wilson's original autograph account of one of the more famous of the many great feats of endurance that characterise what is known as the "Heroic Age" of Antarctic exploration, the winter sledge journey to the emperor penguin rookery at Cape Crozier made during Captain Scott's last and fatal attempt to reach the South Pole, was sold for $217,800 to an overseas collector on September 16 at Bonhams.

Probably the most important manuscript of this era still in private hands and telling the bare-bones story of the journey immortalised by Apsley Cherry-Garrard in that classic of polar literature, The Worst Journey in the World (1922), the manuscript was part of an archive entered for sale by descendants of a key scientific member of Scott's expedition, the physician and naturalist Dr. Edward Adrian Wilson, a man affectionately known to his companions as "Uncle Bill." Wilson's narrative tells in 40 closely written and occasionally illustrated pages the story of an attempt to collect eggs that would allow the study of embryos of the emperor penguins, birds that Wilson considered one of the most primitive and remarkable of species and a possible link between the dinosaurs and birds.

On June 27, 1911, Wilson, together with "Birdie" Bowers and Apsley Cherry-Garrard, set out on what was to be the first sledge journey made during the darkness of the long Antarctic winter. In steadily worsening conditions, they experienced temperatures as low as -77º F (over 100 degrees of frost) during the 19 days it took them to reach Cape Crozier.

There they built a hut from stone and other materials gathered locally and began their studies of the penguin rookery. Numbers were far fewer than expected, and when a lack of fuel and atrocious conditions finally forced them to return to base, they took with them just three eggs—but their journey, like Shackleton's open boat voyage to bring rescue to his stranded expedition members, has become part of polar legend.

Wilson's own report of that ten-week journey, written up before he and Bowers were selected by Scott to be part of the final and fatal push for the South Pole, is largely bereft of the personal touches that made Cherry-Garrard's later account so vivid a narrative, but little imagination is needed to recognise the courage and perseverance needed to cope with the difficulties and privations that the three men had faced in this perilous journey.

Lost to His Country…

Following Nelson's death, 58 gold and enamelled mourning rings like the example shown here were ordered by his executors from the firm of Salter for distribution amongst his relatives, close friends, and the pallbearers at his funeral—all of whom are recorded in a manuscript now in the British Museum. A Viscount's crown and a ducal coronet surmount the initials N and B for his full title, Lord Nelson & Bronte, and the name of the battle at which he fell. The ring is engraved to the outside with a Latin inscription, "Palmem Qui Meruit Ferat," (Let him bear the palm of victory who has won it) and to the inside with the words "Lost to his Country 21 Oct 1805 Aged 47."

The ring sold for $14,455 in a marine sale held by Bonhams on September 15.

Tin-plate Limo Parked in a Cupboard

Like the Chelsea sauceboats featured elsewhere in this month's column, the Märklin tin-plate limousine pictured here was one of those ever popular cupboard finds. It had been in the family for many years, but when Yorkshire auctioneers Tennants of Leyburn put on one of their touring valuation days in the Lake District town of Windermere in Cumbria, something prompted its present owner to retrieve it from its cupboard/garage, take it along, and ask if it had any value.

It certainly did—and much, much more than even Tennants had realised. The car was offered as part of a specialist toy sale on August 21, with an estimate of $660/990, but specialist tin toy dealer David Pressland bid it up to $72,190!

Pressland, who rated the 16" long limousine as by far the best tin toy automobile seen at auction in the U.K. in over 30 years, said, "This example was unusual in having the burgundy brown bonnet [hood] and cab and blue striped rear bodywork, as most examples known are in either green or blue. Although in need of conservation, crucially the original paint was still reasonably good, and restoration should be a relatively easy project."

M.A.D. readers with a particular interest in such things may recall that in May 2006, Maine auctioneer James D. Julia sold a similar limousine for $35,650, though that one had been overpainted.

A Window onto Hammershøi's World

A sale called "Parisian Taste in London," a private collection of works of art sold by Christie's on September 10, allows me the opportunity to feature another work by one of my favourite painters, Vilhelm Hammershøi (1849-1916).

Like the vast majority of his interiors, this one was painted in the apartment at Strandgade 30, a 17th-century house in the Christianshavn district of Copenhagen in which Vilhelm and his wife lived from 1898 to 1909. There, Hammershøi produced endless haunting and peaceful interiors in a small tonal range, some featuring a solitary figure—often his wife, but usually seen from behind—and very often with a window as the focal point.

Felix Kramer, writing in the catalogue produced for last year's exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, Hammershøi: The Poetry of Silence, wrote: "As interfaces, windows (traditionally) embody the dialectical relationship between interior and exterior: they stand both for connection with the outside world and for isolation from it…Despite the central position of the window, Hammershøi's painting departs from tradition because it does not turn on the relationship between interior and exterior, nearness and farness. Indeed the windowpanes are so opaque that the world outside can be deciphered only vaguely. Most window paintings contain far-ranging exterior views, but Hammershøi uses the murky panes and the sunbeams to focus attention on the interior."

Hammershøi produced at least 15 variations of this combination of window and door and here achieves almost an abstract work of muted blues and greys, "subsuming the already limited number of physical motifs to a carefully structured geometric composition which prefigures the work of Piet Mondrian," said the Christie's cataloguer.

Well, perhaps, but I just find Hammershøi's work utterly beguiling.

Two Noble Collections

Last month's column included a small preview piece on items from Powderham Castle in Devon that were to be sold by Sotheby's on September 29. I can now reveal that of the two items illustrated, the carved mahogany library table attributed to Otho Channon was bid to $209,960, but the Reynolds portrait of Frances Courtenay, Lady Honywood, and one of her children failed to sell.

The Powderham Castle pieces were joined in a sale catalogue dubbed "Two Noble Collections" by furnishings from Seaton Delaval Hall in Northumberland, one of several family homes of the Lords Hastings.

One of the most exciting of these entries was a Vincennes porcelain écuelle or covered bowl and stand intended to hold a fish broth or soup. Exquisitely painted by Louis-Denis Armand (and perhaps others), the piece dates to 1754-55. It has a knop on the cover modelled as a leaping fish with shells, a leek, and a mushroom, while the decoration to the bowl, lid, and base includes small vignettes of birds amidst foliage, but it is the vignettes of odd-looking fish amongst shells, rocks, streams, and a fountain that give the piece its real character. As the detail reproduced below shows, the rather grotesque nature of some of these fish does not exactly tempt one to try the broth. It was valued at up to $33,000 but sold in the end for $299,065.

Another Seaton Delaval entry which brought rather more than had been anticipated was a French enamel and gold-mounted dagger and scabbard. The hilt of the dagger and the scabbard are decorated with a continuous spiralling landscape that introduces seas and rivers, hills and valleys, villages, castles, and ancient ruins—this panoramic strip underlined by a colourful ribbon band of flowers and leaves. Possibly the work of Etienne-Lucien Blerzy, the 17½" long dagger is believed to have been made in Paris at some time between 1798 and 1808 and to have been intended for the Turkish market, or even for export to India. Again reckoned to be worth up to $33,000, it sold for $152,545.

The Vincennes fish soup bowl was sold for $299,065 by Sotheby's on September 29 as part of a selection of works of art from Seaton Delaval Hall. As the detail shows, some of the strange-looking fish depicted might have deterred more fastidious diners from trying the contents of the bowl.

The Wright Stuff

It is not, I suggest, immediately obvious what this figure is intended to symbolise, but the arms held aloft are a clue. This nearly 32" high bronze of a man standing on a rocky outcrop is a reduction of part of the 40' high monument to the Wright Brothers created in 1920 by the French sculptor Paul Maximilien Landowski and the architect Paul Bigot. According to Christie's, this Wright memorial was commissioned by automobile factory owner Leon Bollee, at whose premises Wilbur Wright kept his flyer, though a report published in the New York Times at the time said the monument was the gift of one of the many Americans present at the unveiling ceremony, Commodore Louis D. Beaumont, and that it was "erected on a foundation presented through French subscriptions."

The monument was erected in the Place des Jacobins at Le Mans. In the original, the figures of Orville and Wilbur, along with a Wright Flyer, are carved in bas-relief at the base, while at the summit is this symbolic figure of a man whose arms reach for the sky.

Of Polish ancestry, Landowski (1875-1961) created over 35 monuments in Paris and a dozen more in the surrounding country. There is today a museum dedicated to his work in the Boulogne-Billancourt suburb of Paris, but Landowski's best known work is a truly monumental one—the great statue of Christ the Redeemer atop Mount Corcovado in Rio de Janeiro. This was a collaborative effort with the civil engineer Heitor da Silva Costa, but some sources suggest that the figure's head and hands were Landowski's contribution.

Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines

American dealers, it seems, were noticeably absent from the travel and vintage poster sale held by Christie's South Kensington on September 9, but then there was a lot of very British material in this sale—London being especially well represented. On the day, however, collectors took up much of the slack, and around three-quarters of the 280 lots found buyers.

Top-priced lot at $37,148 was an example of Cassandre's famous "Nord Express" poster of 1927, an iconic Art Deco railway image, but I have made my selection from the aviation themed posters on offer. All are coloured litho posters, and unless otherwise stated all can be assumed to be backed on linen.

Albert Brenet's "Imperial Airways Australia" poster was not assigned a date in the South Kensington catalogue, but it was in 1935 that Imperial Airways began to promote a route from England to Australia that took ten and a half days—a huge advance on the steamship alternative, which could take six weeks or more. Passengers had to change planes several times, but the only sector in which flying was not an option was, surprisingly enough, between Paris and Brindisi on the Italian coast. This was because Mussolini's government would not allow planes originating from France to fly over Italian territory. Once at Brindisi, however, passengers were moved on to Alexandria by flying boat and thence to their final destination by smaller land planes, such as the DH 86 seen here, operated by Imperial's Australian partner, Qantas, on the Singapore-Brisbane stretch. This condition A- poster sold for $7223.

"L'Aérocycle Rotateur," an anonymous design of circa 1890, printed by Affiches Américaines of Paris, is a condition B+ poster backed on thin card that sold for $1651. The cyclist suspended from the balloon is Ch. Gilbert, whose portrait features in a medallion at top left proclaiming him to be a world champion aerocyclist.

The first air races, indeed the very first aviation meeting of any kind held in England, took place at Doncaster racecourse in 1909. Public enthusiasm generated by Louis Blériot's flight across the English Channel in July of that year and the huge success that had attended the first French and Italian aviation meetings in August and September prompted two English towns to put on what would be the first flying show in England. The Lancashire seaside resort of Blackpool looked for a welcome out-of-season bonus in a meeting scheduled to begin on October 17, but the south Yorkshire town of Doncaster, determined to get in first, decided that their aviation week would take off two days earlier, on October 15. Heavy winds and rain made conditions very difficult for the flyers, whose mounts were in any case rarely up to short hops, let alone competitive flying, but still some 50,000 spectators, many of whom had never seen an aeroplane, braved the weather and cheered what little exhibition flying they saw. This optimistic poster was produced for the G.N.R., or the Great Northern Railway, whose special excursion trains could get enthusiasts to the show. Listed as condition A, it sold for $8668.

Cyrus Cuneo's "Flying at Hendon" of 1913 is a reminder of the aerodrome that gave so many Londoners a taste for aviation with air shows that began in the early, pioneering days and continued to excite the crowds throughout the 1920's and '30's. Promoting trade by the Underground and Motor Bus to May and June flying displays and races, this condition B+/A- poster was sold for $7223.

Something rather different from the other posters, which are purely about flying machines and airlines, this U.S. poster of 1929, printed by Mather & Company of Chicago, uses the then very familiar silhouette of Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis for the exhortation "Who Said 'Can't'?" The message is "Someone is always doing something someone else said was impossible. Try Trying." Listed as condition A-, it sold for $8255.

In Germany, the year 1909 saw an aviation fair or exhibition that ran from July to October in Frankfurt—an event for which Alfred Oppenheim designed this "Internationale Luftschiffahrt Ausstellung" poster. A condition A- example, it sold for $4953.

Frank Wotton is one of the great names in 20th-century aviation art, and seen here is a poster he produced circa 1953 for British European Airways. "Fly the Rolls-Royce way to London" features the Vickers Viscount airliner, which, powered by Rolls-Royce turboprop engines, was in large measure responsible for the rapid growth of the airline in postwar years. Nowadays, you are only likely to get picked up from your plane by a Rolls-Royce if you are a head of state, but the famous car is introduced into this design as a reminder that RR stood for class and reliability. A condition A poster, it sold for $6604.

Chelsea in the Cupboard

Everyone loves a "found in a cupboard" story, so before I get on to my much larger selection from the season's first big ceramics sale in London, I thought I might slip in this piece from a provincial sale.

This pair of Chelsea sauceboats, offered by Frank Marshall of Knutsford in Cheshire on September 8, was found in a larder or kitchen cupboard in a local home. Called in by the family to clear the cottage home of an elderly relative who was moving to a nursing home, the salesroom were surprised to find a pair of sauceboats which proved to date from the earliest period of Chelsea porcelain manufacture, the Blue Triangle period of 1745-49.

Though there were some small nicks, cracks, and the odd stain or discolouration, this pair of 8" long sauceboats, decorated with landscape panels, floral garlands, and insects, and relief moulded to their bases with ram masks and cherub heads, had survived in pretty good condition. Bidding started at $1500, but potential buyers were warned that considerably more than that would be needed to secure them—and so it proved!

The bidding came down in the end to competition between an Internet bidder and a dealer on the telephone, and it was the latter, later revealed to be London specialist Simon Spero, who won the day at $78,955. Spero, who told the U.K. journal Antiques Trade Gazette that he bought them for stock, said he was aware of only a handful of examples of this silver-inspired form and considers them the earliest of all English porcelain sauceboats and extraordinary for their polychrome landscape decoration in the Meissen idiom-something unrecorded in pieces of this period.

Take the Dane Train

Modelled as a steam train emerging from a tunnel and heading for a bridge, this novelty silver inkstand bears the 1896 mark of Michelsen of Copenhagen. Featuring a waterfall flanked by two green glass ink bottles and centred by a tree that acts as a pen holder, the nearly 16" wide inkstand was sold for $9750 in a Christie's South Kensington "Interiors" sale of September 22.

Bonhams Take Charge of English Ceramics

Bonhams pretty much have the British ceramics market to themselves in London, and their first auction of the new season, a 360-lot selection of pottery and porcelain, took place on September 9. It was not a star-studded event, but offered a broad range of material that included some several single-owner collections and at the end of the day had raised around $1 million with a selling rate of close to 85% by lot and by value. Realistic estimates will have helped in what was for the specialist dealers and collectors their first opportunity in a few months to show how confident they felt about the market.

A selection of some of the more successful pieces from the Bonhams sale is featured here, and I have added a related Punch and Judy item from another of their new season ceramic sales. (See also the related "Chelsea in the Cupboard" piece.)

This 16¾" high creamware model of a caramel-coloured stallion with dark brown mane and tail is of a type believed to have been used as window displays by saddlers and dealers in horse medicine. Such pieces are traditionally attributed to the Leeds pottery, but while no other signed or dated examples are recorded, this example, its ears restored, is incised on the underside of the base "J + Medcalf 1821." The earlier pottery lots were not the strongest section of the sale, but this piece sold at a double-estimate $29,700.
A rare duck tureen and cover of 1755-58, its plumage picked out in green, iron-red, grey, and various shades of brown, sold for $22,770. Similar tureens were produced by Meissen and Chelsea, but this one, said to be derived from an engraving in George Edwards's Natural History of Uncommon Birds (1743-47), was made at the Bow factory.
Derby wares made up a substantial portion of the sale, and seemingly unrecorded in the literature, this figure of a kneeling gladiator is dated to circa 1775. I wonder if any of "Those about to die" in the bloody arena really sported pale yellow leggings and a pink-edged white tunic? Asking for trouble, I should have thought. It sold for $3170.
One of the more expensive pieces from the collection that Derby collector and scholar Alasdair Morrison built up over some 40 years was this coffeepot and cover of circa 1760, which sold for $5740. The principal decoration shows a colourful bird looking down at a snake that has coiled itself round one of its long legs.
	Sold at $20,790 was this pierced and honeycombed Worcester tea caddy and cover by George Owen and Samuel Ranford, which has an ivory band around its circumference and is dated 1890. Owen frequently collaborated with the factory's senior gilder, Ranford, who added the jeweled borders and developed the use of tiny gold dots on the intersections of Owen's pierced honeycomb work. Whether this piece was indeed used as a caddy, or as a potpourri vase, which seems more practical, is a matter of surmise, but it is an unusual shape to find with Owen's distinctive reticulated decoration.

Seen at left is a Royal Worcester candle extinguisher of circa 1881 in the form of Mr. Punch, sporting a bright green cap with gilded tip. It sold for $10,890 in the Bonhams English ceramics sale of September 9. The 1929 Charles Vyse figural group of a Punch and Judy show (shown at right), however, was part of a September 23 Bonhams sale of "Ceramic Design from 1860." A little over 13½" high, the Vyse group sold for $13,465.

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